If you're unfamiliar with the creator dashboard there is a spot reserved for notifications from YouTube. This should have been front and center last week, not buried in a creator help thread. Why wasn’t it? That's open to speculation.

As someone with a small tech channel, I'm glad I was following this. If not, I would have spent the last week swapping out thumbnails and video titles, which seem about as effective as percussive maintenance. But hey, you have to try something.

Well over a decade ago a gentleman by the name of Brian Brushwood said, and I'm paraphrasing, “YouTube is like working for an AI manager that never tells you what it wants but punishes you severely if you get it wrong.”

Welcome to 2025.

Hah! I'm so happy that quote landed with you. I'm starting to do a lot more talking and thinking about how that stuff works, so it's a thrill to see it quoted out in the wild.